


in part at least, golden

by phantomlistener



Category: The Bletchley Circle
Genre: (Lots of Feelings), Bletchley Park, F/F, Feelings, Female Friendship, Gen, Ice-Skating, Winter, gay pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 06:34:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21795946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantomlistener/pseuds/phantomlistener
Summary: Millie didn’t know where the skates had come from but Bletchley was suddenly awash with them, passed from girl to girl with indiscriminate goodwill. At lunchtimes and in the evenings they congregated on the ice, slipping and laughing their way in orderly circles clockwise around the edge; the more daring amongst them ventured into the middle, where they twirled perfect figure-of-eights and danced hand-in-hand to the good-natured applause of their friends.Winter at Bletchley turns to ice and snow, and Millie has time to reflect.
Relationships: Lucy Davis & Millie Harcourt, Millie Harcourt & Jean McBrian, Susan Gray & Millie Harcourt
Comments: 12
Kudos: 31
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	in part at least, golden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deadsandsflashing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadsandsflashing/gifts).

> Title from Mary Oliver's _[Snow Geese](http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/mary_oliver/poems/15857.html)_.

The lake froze over in late December.

Millie didn’t know where the skates had come from but Bletchley was suddenly awash with them, passed from girl to girl with indiscriminate goodwill. At lunchtimes and in the evenings they congregated on the ice, slipping and laughing their way in orderly circles clockwise around the edge; the more daring amongst them ventured into the middle, where they twirled perfect figure-of-eights and danced hand-in-hand to the good-natured applause of their friends. Before and after shifts people lingered around the lake, watching – she noticed Lucy stare with eager eyes – before drifting back to their bunks and lodgings, careful footstep after careful footstep across the gravel and pavements in case of ice.

On the bitterest day of the cold snap, Millie opened the blackout curtains to see snow. It had settled overnight in low drifts, covering everything in sight, and the cold blue light that accompanied it gave her a headache almost immediately. She and Susan slipped and slid their way arm-in-arm to the hut for the six o’clock start to the shift – “Come _on_, Susan, I promise you won’t fall.” – and Millie spent the rest of the day in a breathless sort of anticipation. It felt like Christmas, weeks too early, like the excitement she had felt as a small child waking to remember that it was _today_, all the presents and laughter and grown-ups in pretty dresses. Even the chill that had settled within the hut couldn’t dampen her spirits and she donated her scarf to Susan, remembering all too well the year before when a walk across the snowy fields had ended with Susan, lips blue and hands and feet numb, drinking Miss McBrien’s brandy wrapped in about a hundred blankets.

It very much wouldn’t do for that to happen again.

Come late afternoon, laughter from the frozen lake drifted up into the pre-fab huts through single-glazed windows and draughty doors, carrying with it the promise of a few glorious hours in the fresh air and away from the endless clattering of the machines. Millie was first out of the door when shift ended, hands automatically lighting a cigarette. Outside was not much colder than the poorly-insulated hut, and she was glad of having bequeathed her scarf to Susan.

“God, I’m glad that’s over,” she admitted, taking a drag on her cigarette.

Beside her as they walked, Susan pulled on her hat, a neatly-knitted creation that she’d been working on for the past couple of weeks in the dim evening light. “It wasn’t that bad,” she offered, non-committal. “I think I got at least one step forward on the latest encryption, which is more than I’ve managed all week.”

“Well good for you! All I did was rule out about five hundred possible solutions.”

“That’s five hundred solutions you won’t have to try tomorrow.”

“Optimist,” Millie accused. They were almost at the lake now and everything, from the gravel paths to the ornamental bushes, shimmered with a thick dusting of snow like icing sugar dredged over a cake. The air was crisp, sharp and piercing in her lungs if she breathed in too deeply, and as far as Millie could see across the grounds, the frosted branches of leafless trees glittered softly against the grey sky. People were still skating on the lake, bundled up in hats and gloves and scarves in much the same way as their mothers would have sent them out to play years before.

“Did you ever learn?” Susan asked. “To skate, I mean.”

“Of course,” Millie said with a laugh, and for a second she was back in the room of well-dressed white-booted girls, pigtails flying as they skate around the near-pristine rink. _Didn’t everyone_, she almost said, and stopped herself. “My mother insisted,” she confessed instead. “And you?”

“Oh no,” Susan said with a shake of her head. “And I shouldn’t think I’d be brave enough now.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” The vehemence of her response surprised her for a moment, and she could see it took Susan aback too. “You handle military information that could mean the difference between life and death for thousands of our troops without so much as a...a tremble in your hand, Susan, and it’s _ice-skating_ you’re not brave enough for?!”

“Well I never said it was _logical_.” She looked out over the frozen lake, glittering silver and blue in the cold late afternoon light. “I’m sure it’s great fun if you know how. But I think I prefer it like this. Just looking, you see? The way the light comes through the clouds and catches the ice. I should much rather watch the patterns than-” She trailed off, smiled up at Millie with a hint of embarrassment. “There, now I’m being silly.”

Millie stared at her, at brilliant, _beautiful_ Susan, whose eyes danced like the sparkling ice, who saw patterns in codes and sunlight and snow, and who sometimes seemed so very removed from everyone else in the entire world. “Not silly,” she managed. “Never silly.”

Susan’s smile melted into something stronger, grateful and happy and blinding, and Millie could not breathe with the beauty of it. Her chest hurt. “We should go back in before it gets dark,” she said, and she heard her own voice as if it belonged to someone else. “You must be freezing.”

“You should be wearing a scarf,” Susan chided. “And gloves. You’ll catch a cold if you’re not careful.”

“I didn’t catch a cold last winter when our pipes froze,” Millie pointed out. “Not even the morning there was ice on top of my glass of water.”

Susan laughed, a small amused sound that seemed to escape her throat before she could stop it.

“I’m serious! We British are made of stern stuff, you know.”

“Yes, the Germans don’t stand a chance against the might of your immune system.”

This time it was Millie who laughed, her surprised and delighted huff of breath condensing immediately into a swirling cloud. “Precisely!” Feeling suddenly daring, she linked her arm with Susan’s and leaned conspiratorially in. “I can teach you, if you want,” she offered. “To skate. I really did have an awful lot of lessons.”

Susan ducked her head, and whether it was to hide a smile or a frown Millie couldn’t tell, but when she replied her voice was soft and pleased. “That’s very kind of you,” she said, from somewhere beneath her red knitted hat. “But would you mind dreadfully if we just watched the others instead?”

“Of course not,” Millie said immediately. “Look, how about we go back and wrap up warmly? Then we can spend as long as we like outside. I’ll point out all the dreadful mistakes people are making and we can laugh at them from the safety of solid land.”

Susan’s laugh was swift and joyful and Millie would say all the ridiculous things under the sun to hear it over and over again.

She finished her cigarette and dropped it to the ground, where it sizzled sadly for a moment in the snow before dying. Her right hand was numb to the very bone. She tucked it quickly back into the pocket of her woollen coat, wriggling her fingers to get the circulation going again, and turned back to her companion. “Well come on then, Susan, we have men to laugh at.”

* * *

Two days later and still the ice hadn’t thawed. There was a bitter chill in the air that bit indiscriminately at exposed cheeks and noses, froze the pipes and left a crackling layer of ice over both sides of the windows. Millie had taken to filling the small bowl in their room with water before she slept, to have something to splash on her face in the morning when the taps were frozen closed.

Sally from Hut Two lent her a pair of skates – payment in kind for the dress Millie lent her the week before for a date with one of the cryptographers from the big house – and Millie thought awkwardly, immediately of Susan before realising she knew exactly what to do with them.

“For me?!” gasped Lucy, with an awed sort of excitement.

“For you,” Millie confirmed. “Rosa has dibs tomorrow evening, but until then-”

She was cut off by an enthusiastic hug that knocked the air right out from her chest. “Oh thank you, thank you Millie!” Lucy’s smile was bright as the snow. “I’ve never had the chance to try skating and it looks like so much fun when everybody else does it. How on earth did you manage to get these for so long?!”

“A favour,” Millie said mysteriously. “Now come on, let’s get you out on that ice.”

Lucy took to it like a duck to water, slipping and sliding across the ice with squeals of laughter while Millie shouted instructions from the bank. She was all arms and legs but her smile, unselfconscious and happy in her pale face, beamed bright even when she fell and picked herself back up. There was an innocence to her, Millie thought, that she was sure she never possessed herself at seventeen. Susan had it too, that otherworldly sense of not quite _being_, not quite existing on the same plane.

Millie had always existed very firmly in reality.

In the corner of her vision Lucy almost fell, righted herself with windmill arms, and she was pulled from contemplation by her own laughter, surprising and soft.

“The girl’s doing well,” offered a familiar voice.

She realised then that she was not alone – had not been, perhaps, for some time. “Miss McBrien,” she acknowledged.

“You’ve never struck me as the wallflower sort, Miss Harcourt. I rather expected to see you out on the ice with the others.”

“I lent my skates to Lucy,” she said, and she could feel her lips curling upwards with the sheer force of the fondness she felt for the young girl currently wobbling around on the ice with all the grace of a new-born colt. “And besides, I feel-” She stopped herself, turned abruptly from the frozen lake to face her directly.

Jean had made no concession to the cold weather beyond her coat and looked as put-together as always, nursing a mug of tea and tapping her fingers thoughtfully on the side in a regular pattern as she watched the skaters. She let the moment sit for a while, and didn’t meet Millie’s gaze. “You were saying, dear?”

For all the languages at the tip of her tongue, Millie could not find the words to express the horror at the tiniest fraction of truth that had been about to fall from her lips. “I feel so _tired_,” she said, covered her fear with a brightly forced laugh. “I don’t think I should have the energy for anything like that.”

“I shouldn’t fancy it myself,” Jean confided, and Millie had never felt quite so grateful to anybody as she did to Jean in that moment for her decision to take the conversation at face value.

“That’s exactly what Susan said.”

“A sensible girl, that Susan Havers.”

Millie smiled, genuinely this time, and from the middle of the frozen lake Lucy waved thick-gloved hands, pink-cheeked and laughing. Millie waved back.

"You seem to have taken her under your wing, you and Susan both.” Jean nodded her approval. “I’m glad of it. A girl so soon out of school might struggle here without firm friends.”

“I thought the same thing, to begin with,” Millie admitted. “But I suspect she’s stronger than either you or I give her credit for.

Jean turned to her then, a rare smile gracing her lips. “And she’ll be stronger still with friends like the two of you.”

“I hope so.”

There was silence between them, just the laughter of the skaters and the whisper of a cold wind in the bare trees. In the distance a green-coated woman approached, waved two arms above her head.

Susan.

Jean shifted on her feet, shook the drips out of her mug with one efficient shake. “I'll be seeing you in the morning then,” she said, already half-turned to leave, and Millie's nod was lost to the snow and ice.

Alone again she waved back at Susan, who hurried over with the particular gait of someone trying their best to keep the snow from entering their shoes. “Was that _Jean_ you were talking to?” she asked, as soon as she was close enough to avoid raising her voice.

“She’s not the wicked witch of the west, you know.”

“I know.” Susan wrinkled her nose, made pink with cold. “But she is a bit frightening.”

Millie laughed. “Well I think she's marvellous. I think we all are, Susan, every single one of us here at Bletchley.”

_I think _ you're _marvellous _went unspoken.

Susan smiled back at her, warmth and affection shining out of eyes more grey than blue in the fading light, and moved close, winding her arm through Millie's. “We do make a difference,” she said, softer than snow. “Don't we?”

Out on the ice Lucy was growing in confidence with every wobbly, fearless circuit, mousy brown hair spilling out from underneath her fur hat as she went. Her smile was visible from the bank, a beacon in the encroaching darkness, and Millie could feel the warmth of Susan at her side, all that fearsome intellect quietly contained in such a small person.

“I think we do,” she said, and let herself breathe.

**Author's Note:**

> I read a whole book to research this fic and the only thing I used was this: there really was a lake at Bletchley Park, and people really did skate on it when it froze over!


End file.
